Comedia
by Althea SaDiablo
Summary: X/F, yes. And I torture them horribly, of course. You've been warned. This takes place only a few years after the end of TRY, but for Xellos and Filia it's been more than fifty years, on account of certain events involving time travel that will either be
1. The Call

Comedia: the Call

By Althea SaDiablo

Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers, nor did I create it. I merely obsess over it. That's all.

Inspirations, as of yet: Slayers, of course. Kingdom of the Grail, by Judith Tarr. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia A. McKillip. No storyteller works in a vacuum, after all. Those are two beautiful books, incidentally. I highly recommend that you read them. And if you're reading this, you've probably seen Slayers before, so I'm not going to worry about recommending that.

Author's Note: Despite the title, I'm afraid this thing contains no humor whatsoever- or at least, very little. I'm best at writing dark, angsty, pritty things. Maybe someday I'll try my hand at humor, but probably not for a while. The reasoning behind the title, well . . . it's a comedy in the sense of Dante. Meaning that I start the whole thing off by destroying Xellos utterly, and so it gets happier from there. Kinda sorta. We'll see how this works out.

It started late one night, as she sat down with the books to figure expenses. The slightest brush on her thoughts, the briefest intrusion, the whisper of her name in the deepest parts of her mind.

_Filia_.

She jumped, and it was gone. Blinking, she searched through her mind, trying to find the source of the strangeness, the reason behind it, but she found nothing. Just her imagination?

She believed that until it came again.

Val noticed that something was wrong, of course, but the boy was abnormally perceptive. She held him late into the night, and he was quiet and let her, even though he didn't know what was going on. What could she tell him? That someone was reaching into her mind, into the most private parts of her being, and calling her to them?

She sat after he was in bed, trying to find the source of it, trying to isolate the call so that she could guard against it. But every time she reached for it, it would disappear, sliding from her mind like an insubstantial fog.

It came again as the fire was burning low, sending most of the room into deep shadow. It flickered off the face of the dragon, across empty blue eyes, and gave a red tinge to normally golden hair. The house was silent beyond the muted crackle of it, like a dead thing.

The fire masked the slight sound of displaced air and magic, but his booted feet were cat-silent in the stillness. The dim radiance of the fire lost itself in the folds of a dark cloak, in planes of his face, in the dark, orderly strands of hair that shone purple and black in the uncertain light.

She didn't react when he came to stand in front of her, her eyes staring unblinking into nothing. Nor did she react when he waved a hand before her face, or snapped gloved fingers no more than an inch from her nose. He reached out slowly and put a hand on her shoulder- then she started, jumped, came back to herself with a staggering abruptness.

"Xellos? Why are you-" the anger in her voice was habitual, and quickly gave way to convulsive shivers as she wrapped her arms around herself, her fear conquering all other urges.

"How very strange," his quiet voice seemed almost a natural part of the silence. "Are dragons often called like that?"

"Never." Her voice shook. "Never." She conquered herself enough to look up at him, into open, disconcerting purple eyes. "You're a demon. Have you ever been summoned?"

"Have I ever been summoned?" he seemed on the brink of making a joke, but then his face grew serious. "Not for a very, very long time."

"You've been summoned before . . ." The information brought on the briefest flaring of hope. "Then can you help me?"

"Help you?"

"Tell me how to fight this. Please, you have to tell me . . ." she was desperate, more so than she had ever been before.

He considered it, in that almost-comical way he had, then met her eyes. "There are ways, of course. To track down the call, to follow it back to its source and destroy the mind of the caller from the inside, through the same means that they use to latch onto you. To overwhelm their will with your own, and thus break them. But it can only be done if you are stronger than they are, and able to isolate the call in the first place."

And she was not strong enough, she knew, as she looked into the glowing coals without seeing them. "What's it like?" she asked softly. "To be summoned?"

"It doesn't hurt."

She looked at him, sick at heart, with a smile that was one of pain, and one he well knew. He didn't look away.

"I suppose . . . I would call it a violation of the worst kind. Stripped of your will, controlled by that of another . . ."

"Isn't that true for you already?" she asked, almost bitterly.

"No." He shook his head. "I'm a servant, not a puppet. A summoning is different. A summoning pulls your self from you, and puts you entirely in the hands of another. You do not exist, except as an extension of that power. It was . . . the most awful thing that has ever happened to me. I made sure that it would not happen again, afterwards, but . . ." 

She laughed, once, but it was weak and held little in the way of humor. "You can't help me?" She brushed, with caution, the link that existed between them unacknowledged, forged in desperation, and strong- for all that the two of them tried their best to ignore it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his grip on his staff tighten.

"No," he said, finally. "If you are being called, then there is nothing I can do." He stood, and she watched him, numbly, as he walked towards the door. He hesitated there a moment, then reached out and leaned his staff against the wall behind it.

She didn't look at him as he walked back, or as he took a seat beside her on the bench, his back to the fire. She didn't look at him as he slid his arms around her waist.

_Filia._

She let her head drop onto his shoulder as the call came again, and the tears began to flow.

Filia lay awake as the call came again, as it whispered through the deep places in her mind. Paralyzed, she lay as the will behind it reached the very bottom of her being, as it fathomed the secrets she hadn't even known about, as it sorted through memories and thoughts that had never even touched her conscious mind. And then there was nothing else left except the call, nothing of herself that had not been consumed by it.

She rose, through no will of her own, and walked from the room. The hallway looked unfamiliar, the normal shadows gone strange and alien. She made her way down the stairs, into the common room, towards the door . . .

Someone stood there, still in the darkness. A shadowed figure who filled her with dread, and yet she felt nothing at all. He stood half in and half out of the shadows cast by the moonlight, as if he were their natural extension, barring the door with his presence. The silvered light caught in one open, soulless eye. Without thought she teleported, far beyond, and felt him follow her. Again, again- he didn't attempt to stop her, merely stayed with her, and eventually she began to walk, knowing where she was going without having knowledge of it. He was following, she knew, a silent presence a mere step behind her.

She didn't know how long she walked, nor was she conscious of walking or her surroundings. They entered a cave, eventually, and moved down a natural tunnel. There was no light, but her step never faltered- she heard no sound from the one who followed her, either. The passage opened suddenly on a cave, and she could and could not feel its size with the echoing of her own breath in the darkness.

And suddenly everything was blinding brilliance, and she knew her eyes hurt but couldn't close them, and she couldn't look at the glowing diagrams that spread across the smooth floor of the cavern, and she couldn't scan the ranks of people who stood along the walls.

"Well, well," she knew his voice, and did not. "You put an awful lot of trouble into constructing this particular trap, didn't you?"

"Yes." With that one word, Filia came back to herself, and staggered backwards into ready arms that supported her for a moment, then set her back on her feet. The dragon who had spoken didn't even look at her. "A great deal of trouble."

"I'm waiting," the demon said, and the amassed strength of the dragons sprang- not for him, but for Filia. She screamed as pure, raw mental power streamed through her unprotected being, and then across the new-forged and unexplored bridge to stab into the mind of the demon. They used his innate empathic sense as their door, and stormed past his mental barriers, into the consciousness beyond.

Thought came first, and scattered before them. Random as fish, darting everywhere only to suddenly flash and join in complex, unknowable patterns. Filia could see the beauty in it, almost, as they rushed through, dragging her along- a chaotic, unstructured genius capable of insane mental leaps and the most delicate manipulation.

She saw him jerk where he had fallen with her body's eyes even as she felt the conglomerate of draconic purpose blaze through the surface of his thoughts and dig deeper.

Emotion followed like a storm, violent and buffeting. Gusts of anger/fear, hatred/despair, surprise/shock, pain/betrayal (she winced), somehow always touched with . . . amusement? The only constant, and a natural part of the insanity surrounding it. A single strand that managed touched every other feeling, lending humanity to emotions that felt almost like a human's, and yet were not.

It was less than nothing to them. They rooted it all out, and kept going.

They went through centuries of memory in a mere moment, ignoring the flashes of darkness and light, mental records of civilizations that had long since fallen and crumbled into dust. Heedlessly smashed memories of people long-dead, of events long-forgotten, a chronicle of a thousand thousand stories that had never been told.

Below it all lay the most primal wiring, but that was like nothing she'd ever seen before. The normally straightforward lines of basic instinct and action were an impossible tangle, and the pain and pleasure centers were switched- no, entirely intertwined- no, they were the same thing- she couldn't tell what, or make the least sense of the contorted, grotesque structures that were the most elementary of any mind. There was no order to it, no sensible links between stimulus and response, only a bizarre union that transcended rationality with a feral sort of joy at the shear insanity of it all.

But that was not what they wanted, either. They tore through the whole of it, carelessly, and brought her along, as both tool and vehicle.

Finally, below it all, was the center of existence, a single, glittering, shifting mass of purpose, the root of everything else. Only here was there a sense of reason, a meaning, and end and a beginning. A single directive that ran below everything else, that governed the entirety of his existence. She knew what it was immediately, even as she recoiled from the intense cloak of darkness and mystery, the unknowable depths of-

He had been silent as they tore apart his mind, but now he screamed- she heard him scream, and heard herself scream- as they reached his darkness, his essence, his link to his master and creator- and lit it on fire.


	2. Empty Shell

Comedia: Empty Shell

By Althea SaDiablo

Disclaimer: Nope, I still don't own Slayers. Sorry.

Influences: somewhat by Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey. From my favorite trilogy by her, the Books of the Last Herald-Mage. But how did humor manage to creep it's way in here? I'm not quite sure, but that type of thing's kind of from the books of David Eddings, which at one point I read closely and religiously. They remain fantastic books. 

Filia came back to herself when she realized that the scream echoing off the stone walls was hers. It continued in horrible loneliness well after the noise had died in her throat, then finally faded in the corners of the high ceiling. She noted, distractedly, that she was shaking, as she struggled to grasp the sheer horror of the destruction she had just been vehicle and witness to. She felt very, very weak.

The rustle of cloth and the soft sound of slippered feet on stone floor grounded her once again. She looked up to see the dragons filing from the room in a procession of white-and-gold robes. Not one of them looked at her. Filia swallowed hard and summoned up enough strength to manage a slow walk towards where Xellos had been a short eternity before. The fact that he was still there took a moment to register on her abused senses.

He lay on the cold rock in the spot where he had stood, stripped of staff and clothing. His body was folded in on itself in a fetal curl, and his normally orderly hair lay ragged and disheveled on the smooth floor. There was something terribly defenseless in the curve of his spine, in the leanness of a pale, whipcord frame mercilessly bared to the harshness of stone.

She thought he was dead until she picked out the slightest of movements, the shallowest rise and fall of the skin over his ribs.

"He's finished."

The words, unnaturally loud in the stillness of the cavern, made Filia jump. She could feel her own heartbeat in her ears as the Elder walked past her and contemptuously prodded Xellos' still form with his staff.

"What?" her own voice grated past the raw thickness of her throat, and sounded strange to her own ears.

"Finished. Destroyed." The Elder didn't look at her, either. "His mind no longer exists, his being is shattered. His power is demolished. The only thing left of him is this, the physical shell he once created." Filia could see the Elder's face twist into a grim smile of triumph. "The destroyer has been destroyed. Justice is served."

She didn't even have the energy to gape at him. "You . . . you used me . . ."

"To put an end to one of the worst threats the race of the gods have ever faced, yes."

"How . . . how could you . . ." the words sounded dead to her own ears, leeched of energy.

"Simple." The Elder turned away from the unconscious body. "You abandoned your god and your race, Filia Ul Copt. We have no more responsibility to you."

She was too tired and numb to feel the hurt of his words, too raw from the power they had forced through her mind to come to her own defense. "What will you do with him now?"

"Nothing."

That surprised her. "Nothing?"

"His mind, his power, his very being are no more. There's no need to dirty our hands with his blood, as well. He will probably never regain consciousness. He'll die here, where he's fallen."

"You're so cold . . ." she whispered.

"Who is the cold one? Who walked away from her own people? Consider your own actions before you dare to judge ours." He walked past her, then paused. "Leave him, Filia. He doesn't deserve your pity, and he's already dead."

She stood there for a long moment after the Elder left, then moved to crouch beside the fallen priest. She put a hesitant hand on his shoulder and quickly jerked away- his skin was ice cold.

She stayed, hunched over by the demon's body, and thought about the Elder's words.

"Never," she whispered, past the hoarseness of her throat, and teleported herself and the unconscious demon home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
"Mama?" Val's voice snapped her back to herself when she would have gladly collapsed to the wooden floor of her room. "Mama, what's wrong? Where did you go? What happened?"

He nearly knocked her over when he threw his arms around her, and she gathered him in close, taking comfort in the small, warm body. "Oh, Val, I'm so glad to see you . . ."

"Mama, where did you go? What happened . . ." he looked up at her with wide, earnest yellow eyes. "What happened to Xellos?"

"Xellos is . . . sick," she said. How could she explain? "Listen, Val, I need you to help me, okay? I need you to get me those extra blankets from upstairs."

"'course!" the young dragon gave her a worried look and ran out of the room. Eager to please, as always. Filia sighed and turned back to the unconscious demon, still tightly curled in on himself. She ignored her embarrassment as she tried to get him to straighten out, but he didn't seem inclined to cooperate. His skin had a bluish cast to it, and shivers racked his long limbs, even coiled up tightly as he was. She realized, now that she could get a better look at him, that he was cradling something to his chest, as if trying to protect it. But even tired, she was still strong, and much more determined than the unconscious mazoku.

When she finally pried the thing out of his hands he went abruptly limp, his muscles letting go of their tension all at once. She recognized it by its size and dull red gleam as the ball from his staff, but it was blackened, and a wide crack split it down the center, with hairline fractures spread from it over the rest of the surface. There was no trace of the wood that it had been set in, nothing to explain why it remained when the rest of Xellos' possessions had been destroyed . . . along with his mind.

She put it aside when Val returned, and together they managed to get Xellos tucked into Filia's own bed. Filia sighed as she tiredly sent her son to his own room, ignoring his insistent questions. She had no good answers for him, or for herself. She would deal with what to do next . . . later. Tomorrow. Now she was exhausted, and every time she looked at the too-still body tucked into her bed, she shuddered away.

She herself fell asleep in a chair, without even taking off her boots.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
Morning light pried relentlessly through her closed eyelids, bringing her away from troubled, restless dreams that even exhaustion hadn't been enough to prevent. She felt awful, stiff and sore, and her tongue felt like sandpaper against the dry roof of her mouth. Her mind was still cloudy from the reluctant retreat of sleep. Stiffly, she lifted her head and rubbed the sand from her eyes.

Xellos was there, so still that she almost didn't think he was breathing. His skin had lost the blue tint of cold, buried as he was beneath heavy winter blankets, but he was still overly pale. His face looked drawn and quiet, and deep shadows had imprinted themselves beneath his eyes.

Filia used the hard chair she'd spent the night in to pull herself to her feet, staggering a little as pins and needles shot up her legs. She closed her eyes and waited for her body to adjust to the shift in altitude. She felt dirty and grimy, and she wanted nothing more than a hot bath, but she knew she had to do something about Xellos. She steeled herself and brushed aside his bangs to lay a hand against his forehead. No fever, the first mercy in what had to be in the running for the most horrible 24-hours of her life. He was so quiet . . . she shivered as she remembered the single-minded destruction of his being, and banished the memories as best she could. First things first. If all that was left of him was a physical shell, then he would need food, and water.

She paused in the doorway of Val's room to check on him. He was sprawled across his bed with the loose-limbed abandon unique to children, his bright hair spread over the pillow in a rough halo. His dreams, at least, were untroubled, and his sleep easy. She took what comfort in it she could, and stumbled downstairs.

First things first. There was no way she could open the shop today- she felt like death lightly warmed over herself, and had an unconscious man who only barely qualified as alive to care for. She left a brief note of apology on the door and then stood dumbly in the door of her small kitchen, unable for a moment to think of what to do.

Liquids. Soup, it would have to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She set the steaming bowl on her bedside table and wondered how she was going to do this. His eyes were still closed, and the rise and fall of his chest, if shallow, was steady. His hair, normally perfectly neat, was tangled against the pillow. She took him by the shoulders and lifted him, propping him up at an angle and supporting him with another cushion. He didn't respond, even when she tilted his head back and pried his mouth open enough to spoon the soup into him.

The dragon frowned. He wasn't swallowing. She managed to catch the thin line of soup dripping out of one corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, then tilted his head farther back and tried again. This time she made sure the thin liquid was all the way in the back of his mouth, then rubbed his throat to start the reflex motion of swallowing. Once the first spoonful was down, he began to do so on his own.

Finally, she put the empty soup bowl aside to stare at the unconscious demon who lay so still, his face as pale as the linen pillow. She steeled herself and, whispering a brief word to focus her abilities, reached inside his slumbering mind-

-and pulled her consciousness out again, shaking. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. In fact, she would have thought he wasn't there at all, if it weren't for the proof of his overly vulnerable body lying unconscious before her. No astral body met her probing, no massive, shifting darkness seething just below the fabric of the visible world.

Val wandered in, then, all wide, sleepy golden eyes and mussed hair. "Mama?"

She managed a smile for him, her true pride. "Morning, dear . . ."

He climbed up on her lap and peered at Xellos' quiet, composed features. "Why hasn't he woken up yet?" he asked, with all the simplicity of the young.

"I don't know," Filia said, putting an arm over the energetic young dragon to keep him from climbing onto the bed in his eagerness to examine its occupant. "But we're going to be taking care of him for a while, all right?"

"Okay!" Val was not about to object to such an interesting proposal, but his attention rapidly shifted. "What's for breakfast?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Xellos didn't move until the next day.

Val had fallen asleep with the suddenness reserved for animals and children, curled up at the foot of the bed. Filia herself was seated in the chair she'd pulled up to the bedside, staring blankly into nothing. Her body ached- she'd spent the previous night in the very same chair, and pillows had done nothing to make it more comfortable. And she'd kept waking up from strange dreams, over and over- and he was in all of them, a thousand flashes and visions, the chaos of his mind, his memories, and the terrible, burning fire that flashed through the deep, dark center of it.

His breathing caught, for a moment, and since it was the only sound in the room it snapped Filia out of her tired trance, and brought her eyes swiftly to his face. And then his eyes opened, slowly, and her fingers closed hard on the material of her skirt.

His eyes were open, but entirely empty of what they had once held- the malicious light that could so easily fade to amusement, and to unreadable secret. It was gone, and left only a wide amethyst gaze, no longer mazoku, but also lacking in anything she could identify as human. She didn't even see him blink- it was as if he'd forgotten how.

After a moment she reached out and turned his face towards her. His eyes closed then, and opened, and slowly focused on her face.

"Xellos?" she spoke his name as a question, her voice hushed.

And then she was certain that he was gone, truly gone, and this fragile shell of a body was all that was left. Of course she had known that, had told herself that, she had felt it as the dragons had destroyed him, looked where his mind and being should have been with her magic. Felt the jagged edge of the mental bridge that had once spanned their minds, and now led to nothing. But she had never quite believed it.

That left her with a question, though, one she had been avoiding, as she had avoided facing the emptiness behind those purple eyes.

What now?

He was still looking at her, and she could see herself in the clear purple of them. "You're gone. You're really gone . . ." she whispered. She could feel wetness pricking in her own eyes, and willed it away.

Enough. She had to deal with things as they were now, or else she could not force herself to continue. "Xellos, it's me, it's Filia. You're at my home, above my shop . . ."

There was no response to her words, but she kept talking, to fill the silence of the room if nothing else. She reached out and gently lifted one of his hands, opening and closing it, opening and closing, until he did it himself. He turned his head now to look, watched his own fingers move as if he was not quite aware that they were his.

Her voice caught for a moment, but she continued with the other hand, then curved his once-clever fingers around the bowl and spoon she had brought. It took him a few tries, but finally he was spooning soup into his own mouth, and swallowing it, and she could sit back and watch him , and let her tired words trail away into nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
She returned from the village the next day with a bundle of clothing for her new houseguest. Val had taken to the game she'd made of taking care of Xellos with great enthusiasm, and had managed to get the former demon not only to drink on his own but to eat something a bit more substantial than soup. She was willing to guess that the boy had shared some of his secret stash of sweets. Undoubtedly Val was a bit of a bad influence-

She stopped there, as she realized what she had to do, what duty she had appointed for herself and for her son. They would need to rebuild Xellos' shattered mind from the very bottom, replace all the instincts and connections that were so fundamental to living things . . . The sheer magnitude of the task staggered her.

Despair dragged at the edges of her thoughts, but she stifled it and entered her home with new resolve. She had to do it, had to keep him alive and make him whole, because the broken creature she had brought out of that cave had been broken through her . . .

She had Val help her to guide his arms into the sleeves of the simple, oversized linen shirt she'd found, and pulled it over his dark, tangled hair, then faced the greater challenge of trying to get him to stand up. Val found her efforts hilariously funny, and wasn't much help as he kept collapsing into giggling heaps on the floor- generally in inconvenient locations. Xellos himself apparently had no idea of what she was trying to do, and finally ended up on the floor himself as a result of an unwise yank, which managed to overbalance her, as well.

All three of them ended up in a pile, then, and looking from the blank, puzzled look on Xellos' face to her son, convulsing with laughter, she couldn't help but join him. Because it was all just too staggeringly unreal, somehow, and yet it had happened just the same. And then, of course, Val required tickling, until he managed to squirm away from her. He retreated to the underside of the bed to glare at her comically with accusing hawk-yellow eyes as she recovered her composure enough to straighten up Xellos' tangle of leg and get him sitting on the edge of the bed again. 

This time, with Val helpfully holding onto both Xellos' ankles, she managed to get him standing straight, swaying slightly on his bare feet and watching her out of his strange and empty purple eyes. He looked somewhat more than mildly ridiculous with his hair in dissaray and long limbs sticking out of the oversized shirt she'd found for him, and she had to stifle her laughter all over again.

Then, of course, like the mischievous dragon he was, Val shifted his grip and pulled with all the strength of a troublesome and determined four-year old, and sent Xellos from his rather precarious standing position into Filia, and both of them tumbling to the floor again.

It took her most of the rest of the day to teach Xellos how to walk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
One thing that she could say about the whole mess, though, was that Xellos was a fast learner. She only had to show him how to do things once, and then he would never forget. They'd managed to get through solid food, and drinking, and walking, and stairs- which had been rather painful, not to mention physically, mentally, and magically exhausting. She'd never cast so many healing spells in a single day, that she could remember, not even way back in the past when she'd traveled with a certain chaos-spreading sorceress and her motley band of companions.

She was infinitely glad for Val's help, and made sure he had plenty of incentives to continue this particular little game. It kept him very busy, and somewhat out of trouble- and it also saved Filia from having to teach Xellos a lot of things she really didn't want to teach him. Like how one used a bathroom, for instance. And how one got into the bath. And how to put on certain clothing items that people wore that weren't oversized linen shirts. Val, a complete and total four-year-old, found all of this really funny, and of course used the situation to his advantage to gain things like extra cookies and longer stories and chances to play in the mud.

It took them a long and exhausting week, but finally Xellos was functioning. In fact, he was sitting at the table and eating, with a knife and a fork and passable table manners- somewhere between Filia's, which were practically impeccable, and Val's, which were certainly not. And she could smile as she looked back over the past week, in triumph over the progress she'd made-

And that stopped her. This was improvement, that he could walk and keep himself clean and eat. That he could perform basic human functions- and she was happy about it?

She went back to her memories- of a cultured and constantly amused monster who sat calmly across from her and smiled as if he knew everything that was going on . . . as if he knew it, and understood it, and was waiting patiently for her to catch up with him and figure it out. Of a man who was always in control, always knowing and rarely surprised, and always watching her, following her with strange, mysterious and deep slanted eyes-

She jumped as what appeared to be a clump of potatoes went flying past her nose, and glanced startled across the table. Sure enough, Val was teaching Xellos how to use his spoon as a catapult.


	3. Nocturnal Visit

Comedia: Nocturnal Visit

By Althea SaDiablo

Disclaimer: Don't own Slayers. Never have. Never will. Sad.

Author's note: I'm getting farther from my inspirations now, working on my own steam. So there's no specific series or author to credit here. If you're curious about what I'm currently reading and doing lately, though, my current authors are Jan Siegel, Dianna Wynne Jones, and Patricia A. McKillip- quite a scary and peculiar blend, if you ask me, but they're all brilliant. And I'm watching Jet Li movies obsessively.

Yes, be very afraid.

In any case, this particular installment as been much delayed, and my apologies for it. A lot of things came up one after the other . . . But thanks goes to Digi-riven for actually writing me an e-mail and sending me back to work, else you'd all be waiting even longer. J First letter about my writing that I've ever gotten! You have no idea how special that makes me feel. So here's a cookie for Digi-riven, and another little chapter for everyone.

He fell asleep that night on the kitchen floor, curled up in the warm corner next to the stove. She couldn't bear to wake him- his empty eyes haunted her, and it was a relief to see him in such a natural and unstilted activity. He could sleep, she didn't have to teach him that. She wondered if he still dreamed, when his mind and very being had been destroyed. She fetched him a blanket and then opened her account books at the table, but found herself watching him instead. Watching his face, relaxed, and those eyes, closed now, so she could no longer see them empty of all they'd once held . . .

Filia lifted her head from the table, blinking groggily and wondering what had woken her. The shop was dark; apparently she'd fallen asleep over the books again, driven past the point of exhaustion. Her own fault, of course . . . but the source of her guilt was curled in the corner, silent as ever-

-so what had woken her?

She looked up and gasped at the slim figure who stood in the open doorway of the shop, framed by moonlight and the night sky beyond, casting a long shadow across the bare wooden floorboards. Elegant, lean lines . . . graceful carriage . . . silver light brushed the outside of legs and arms, the whiteness of a dress, a smooth, silky cloud of hair . . .

Filia rose slowly to her feet as the woman stepped uninvited into the room, silent and feather-light and undeniably dangerous. The dragon knew the intruder was watching her, because she caught the feral cat-flash of inhuman eyes, a spectral glow that held her rooted in place.

A ragged gasp from the corner of the common room freed her, and she swayed as those terrible eyes shifted away from her, and the intruder moved towards the sound.

He sat half in shadow, half in light, and he was shaking. Filia could see the trembling that racked his frame, and that his eyes were wide open under the fringe of unkept bangs. He was pressed back against the wall, chest rising and falling in ragged gasps as the intruder walked towards him in a predatory glide.

"Don't-" the sound of her own voice, hushed and half desperate, surprised Filia enough that she took a step forward. Her reward was another ember-swift flash of those terrible, wild eyes.

"I won't hurt him," said the Greater Beast, and her voice was a river-smooth, deep melody over the gravel-growl of rock. "I only came to see him for myself."

Filia winced and felt again the wash of guilt, but was unable to look away as the Beastmaster reached a deceptively delicate hand, elegant despite the claws, out towards her former servant. He jerked away from her touch with a pained whimper, and she drew back, then rose from her crouch.

"He is beyond repair," she said.

"I . . . I know." Filia could barely get the words out. "I was there."

_I was there _. . . the words echoed in the silence.

"You are taking care of him." It was not a question, and contained no curiosity.

"I have to." _I'm responsible _. . .

"Do as you like."

"Wait!" Filia actually stepped forward, reaching out to the departing Beastmaster. Stunned at her own audacity, she froze in midmotion. "Won't you stay? Don't you care? He was your priest . . ."

"Look at him."

Xellos' head hung low, long, ragged bangs over his eyes. His too-thin shoulders jerked convulsively, repeatedly. The only sound in the silence was his harsh breathing, but the moonlight showed the wet tracks of tears down his pale face.

"My presence causes him a great deal of pain, dragon. The best thing I can do for him is leave."

Filia stared at the once-demon crumpled in the corner of her shop.

"Perhaps you should have let the dragons kill him. It might have been kinder than having him continue to live, shattered as he is."

"No." The dragon's voice was low, haunted.

"He is no longer mine." The door closed behind the Beastmaster, and left Filia in darkness.

She couldn't sleep that night. The promise of nightmares dogged her as she smoothed the tears from his wet face, as she stared into dark, empty eyes searching for- what was it that she was searching for? As if the moonlight could find what daylight had not, a spark of him somewhere that both the dragons and his former lord had missed. But she found nothing there but incomprehension. He didn't even seem to realize that he was crying, that he shook with terrible, racking spasms in her arms. He finally slumped, exhausted, and she fixed the blanket around him again. His sudden pain, his fear when the Beastmaster had approached him, all of it was the same as the terrified cringing of an animal threatened with it's death.

She still wondered about the tears, though.

She was selfishly glad to have her own bed back, and hadn't the energy to feel ashamed the next night as she slid thankfully between the blankets. Xellos had again fallen asleep in the corner by the stove again, and she was both too exhausted and too reluctant to wake him up and move him. Perhaps now she would finally regain the strength that had seeped out of her since the dragon's call first crept insidiously into her quietest thoughts.

She settled into the fog on the edge of sleep and let her thoughts drift. Images whispered in and out of her mind's eye, clear despite the dulling touch of sleep. A too-thin frame laid mercilessly bare on hard stone. A body careless in sleep as she tucked a blanket around flesh that didn't mind the wood of her kitchen floor. Hair scattered carelessly across unyielding, polished marble. Eyelashes casting shadows on a pale face lit faintly by the glowing coals o the kitchen stove.

She dreamed that those eyelids suddenly fluttered and opened, and inside of them a terrible red-black fire burned, and held her transfixed for an endless moment as the world splintered and rearranged itself, as her mind expanded beyond the limits of her body to grasp at something so elusive, so fragile . . . And then she held it in her hands, a scorched and cracked red jewel with jagged tracks of light shooting just beneath it's clouded surface. Faster, and closer, and she watched them, and then it pulsed once, twice- and then it exploded and everything went to crystal and glass, then light again shot through with red-

"_Filia!_"

A single blood-red flower in the middle of a wall of green-black ivy, a ruby in black velvet. She could pick out each petal, the delicate structure of black stamen in its center. She reached for it, and her fingers were dripping blood from a thousand thorn-thin scratches she could not even feel. And then she cupped her fingers around it, and the petals were as soft as fine velvet against her marred skin, and a vine curled around her wrist as quiet and slow as liquid, and traveled up her arm, and she closed her eyes as her vision went to mist red-

"_Filia!_"

She woke with a spasm to the bright light of mid-morning, and Val's solid weight cutting off her air supply.

"Mamma, breakfast was _ages_ ago." His voice was filled with all the reproach of a hungry 6-year-old, and it banished the echoes of a voice calling her name to the misty depths of forgotten dreams.


	4. Memory

Comedia: Memory

            By Althea SaDiablo

Author's Note: This chapter was going to be about twice the length it is now, but I wanted to get it up before I went to Pennsic, so I decided to make it into two chapters. To clear up a few continuity issues: at some point after TRY, Filia and Xellos and fetal Valgaav (my name for Val-as-an-egg) and Gravos and Jillas all ended up being transported into the future- I never could resist the urge to fool around with time. I'm not entirely sure of everything that happened yet, though I've a couple of vague ideas running around my head. Fifty years passed for them, enough time for Val to hatch, Gravos and Jillas to die (or just depart, or whatever. Natural causes or non, I haven't quite figured that out yet. In any case, they're quite gone), and Filia and Xellos to become closer- I wouldn't go so far as to call them friends, but at least they made it to not-enemies. They had adventures, some of which had far-reaching results on them, and on various events throughout time, and then they came back to the present. To Lina and the others, it's been a few years. And I promise that I didn't split anyone up. So don't worry. g You'll see what I mean. Thanks goes to Majo-chan for being good enough to edit this and give me comments- go read her fics, they're awesome. Maybe if you help me pester her she'll write more. Let's give it a try, huh? ;-)

            Filia was elbows-deep in a sink full of dirty dishes when a small, localized and highly destructive tornado broke down the door to her kitchen.

            Or, to be more precise, it was knocked off its hinges by the irresistible energy of one small, redheaded sorceress with no patience for little things like the fact that the pottery and weapons shop was closed every seventh day, and no respect for wooden barriers meant to maintain personal privacy. 

            "Filia! I haven't seen you in forEVER! What have you been doing?"

            The statement was a little closer to truth than Lina knew, but only by about fifty years or so.

            Filia wasn't really thinking about that, though, as she rushed to hug the woman she still considered the best friend she'd ever had, shattering a plate and trailing soapsuds all over her nice, clean kitchen floor in the process. But she found that she didn't much care, as suddenly she realized how much she'd missed-

            "Filia."

            -that down-to-earth nature and volatile temper, with-  
            "Filia!"

            -the companion and conflicting compassionate nature that lurked just beneath the surface-

            "Ow!" Filia couldn't help a reproachful look upwards from the floor where she'd landed after a painfully sharp elbow to the stomach.

            "I needed to _breathe_, Filia," Lina said irritably, but was smiling the next moment. She'd grown, Filia noted, surprised as she updated old and cherished memories. She'd added some trim to her outfit, and magical runes lined the inside of her cloak. She'd gotten a new pair of boots somewhere, but she was the same Lina, dusty from the road, her long hair tangled by the wind, with the same warm red eyes that barely contained the fire of her spirit, that irresistible personality that charmed friends and enemies alike. Perhaps there was more maturity there in that worldly gaze than Filia remembered, perhaps her strength was just a little less overwhelming and more tempered, perhaps the battered sheath of her blade was a little more worn.

            Her smile faltered, and she leaned over Filia and helped her to her feet, suddenly solicitous. "Gods, Filia, you look like hell! What have you been doing to yourself?"

            Filia allowed herself to be guided to one of her kitchen chairs, but her voice caught when she tried to speak. "Lina, I . . . I . . ." she didn't know where to begin, what she could start with. The events that had led to fifty years beyond the reach of time, Val's hatching and growth, the past month living with-

            -the clatter of wood on wood made them both jump and spin towards the doorway. Xellos stood half indoors and half out, his armful of fuel scattered on the floor at his feet. He had woodchips caught on his brown pants, and dirt smudged the simple linen shirt that hung loosely from his shoulders. His bangs tangled and hung ragged in his face, but they did not quite disguise the eerily blank eyes that had once hidden so much, and promised nothing at all. He was staring at Lina, but his _expression was one of mild surprise, not recognition.

            Filia rushed to pick up the wood he had dropped, offering reassurances as he, too, knelt to help her, and they piled the wood back in his arms.

            "Filia."

            Filia turned from the floor to see Lina sheath the weapon she had drawn out of reflex when the noise had startled her. The sorceress' face contained no surprise, only that set and determined grimness with which she had faced both mazoku generals and her own death. Filia felt her eyes drop from that unflinching red stare to look at her own slim hands as they clutched at a piece of wood until Xellos silently took it from her.

            "I think," Lina said, her voice grim, "that this is going to be a long story."

********************************************************

            Filia finally sat back in her chair, her throat raw from talking, and fiddled with her untouched cup of tea. Val had long since come and gone, happy at the strange visitor who had examined him with an equal curiosity, but bored with the grown-up talk around the table. He had eventually left to entertain himself in an offended pout, since Filia had forbidden him to drag off Xellos for a playmate, and the newcomer was obviously more interested in the boring conversation than in having a good time. He had been all the more disappointed because he had recognized a kindred spark of mischief in his mamma's new friend, but had been unable to drag her from the table.

            "Have you checked?"

            Lina's question startled Filia into looking up. "What?"

            The sorceress impatiently shoved her own cup aside, empty. "I mean, have you checked? Looked into his mind, set a trace on him- there's got to be something there. Some scrap of power, some glimmer of thought in that head of his."

            Filia looked over at where Xellos sat at the table on her left, watching both women without so much as a sound or movement. She would have been impressed with his patience, if she had been able to recognize it as patience instead of just a blank, mindless waiting. "There's nothing. Nothing at all. He can do simple tasks, things I've taught him how to do. He plays with Val, but that's mostly just Val telling him what to do, or showing him . . . He can understand spoken orders, if they're simple and combined with demonstration. He responds to his name, now, but I don't think he knows what it means . . . Sometimes I think there's something else, sometimes I think I see an awareness, a flash of personality, a sense of humor . . . Sometimes when he's sitting there, just watching me when I'm not looking, I feel as if he's aware, and I turn around . . . But- there's nothing. Always, it's just my imagination, and there's nothing behind his eyes at all." She hated the way her voice sounded, tired and hopeless.

            "But have you checked _inside_?"

            "Yes!" The word tore its way out of the dragon's throat, and it astonished her to silence because it sounded more like a cry of pain than an answer. She met Lina's compassionate gaze with one of hopeless desolation. "I looked. Even when I knew he was gone, I kept looking, kept groping my way through emptiness. They destroyed him! If they had missed any part of him, I would have known, I might even have been able to bring him back- if there was anything left inside him I would know!" Her voice was rising, and she knew it; she lowered it with an effort. "They only managed to destroy him because they destroyed him through me, and I knew him." She laughed, short and bitter. "I was afraid, too afraid to face him with it- but I knew him."

            "I want to look."

            Filia was shocked into meeting Lina's eyes. "What?"

            "I said I want to look." The redhead had a set, determined look on her face. "Right now. Show me how the dragons got into him, and show me what's there now." Her tone said that Filia's agreement was already expected, and that a negative response was not permitted. Filia swallowed, and nodded as Lina removed her gloves and brushed aside Xellos' bangs to rest her fingers against his forehead, then reached for Filia's-

            The sudden rush of power into her mind made Filia gasp, but Lina's will easily held the maelstrom of force in check. _It's all right_, Lina thought, and it was. _Show me_.

            Filia opened the way through her mental barriers to the bridge that had once linked her being to that of a demon, and swayed as Lina jumped to examine it.

            _Stop that_, Lina sounded annoyed, and a part of Filia quailed that someone with that much raw magical power was angry at her. _For Ceipheed's sake, it's just me. Pull yourself together._

            The dragon did as she was told. This was Lina, after all, and just because she'd never quite been faced with the exact extent of the small sorceress' power on such a personal level didn't change anything. Lina was Lina, a package entire- temper, irresistible charm, violence, compassion, small-

            _Watch it_.

            -stature that belayed an overwhelming and caring personality within. Her friend.

            _Enough already! _Filia felt the jolt of warmth from the sorceress, followed by the quick leap of curiosity as she examined the bridge. _This is amazing. How did this get here, anyway?_

            _No, wait! Nevermind! I don't want to know!_ Lina cut off the sudden flow of Filia's memories. _Waaay__ too much information. Tell me sometime when I'm not in your head, or I'm going to have an overload headache when I get out of this. I'll probably have one when you tell me, anyway . . ._

            Then she turned her attention to the emptiness at the end of the bridge, where Xellos' mind ought to have been. _You're right, there's nothing here. Nothing at all- not a memory, not even a glimmer of residual power to show who created the physical shell . . . _Lina paused. _But that's not right. A monster's body fades when it dies- even Shabrinigdo crumbled to dust, and that dust to nothing . . . As if it had never been. They don't leave anything behind, just an energy signature on the astral plane that lingers after they're gone._

            They had not killed him, not the way one killed monsters, Filia recalled. They had gone through him, all of him, through all the patterns and structures and energies that had made Xellos, and they had gone down to the very root of him and burned it away.

            _That doesn't make sense. _Filia could feel Lina batting the thought around, trying to make sense of it, referencing her store of arcane knowledge. _There's no reason that- _suddenly her mind lit on something, and her surprise blew through Filia's mind like a wind. _Filia__. Why are there pieces of you in here?_

            That couldn't be right. She had to be mistaken.

            _No, I'm not. The bridge that once connected you ends, but- where Xellos ought to be- it's not entirely empty. Don't you feel this?_ Filia felt herself shiver as Lina's mental touch brushed against something. An image came to mind- 

~~cold stone floor under her feet it was winter she knew as she watched the first snowflake drift from the night sky one two three more beautiful it was going to be mounds of feathers and coldness and play in the snow if she was good if no one caught her out of bed awake watching the snow with a cold stone floor under her feet it was winter she knew~~

_            That ought to be firmly lodged in you, in your mind and being, linked to your body. It's your memory, after all. But it's not. It's over here. There's other parts of you, too. Not just memories, either._

            But that was ridiculous. Impossible. How could essential bits of her be in a totally different body?

            "That's what I'd like to know," Lina said, as she pulled herself out of Filia's mind.


End file.
